Previous studies of the relationship between perceptions and/or evaluations of the learning environment and approaches to study have either not included measures of students' learning outcomes, or have included quantitative differences and not qualitative differences in learning outcomes. The studies reported in this paper focus on the relationship between qualitative differences in learning outcomes, perceptions/evaluations of the learning environment and approaches to study. The results support previous research in identifying relationships between perceptions/evaluations of the learning environment and approach to study and between approach to study and the quality of the learning outcomes. The second of the two studies reported also identifies a relationship between perceptions, approaches and the quality of the outcomes. The results suggest that perceived environments which encourage deep approaches are more likely to facilitate higher quality learning than environments designed to discourage surface approaches.

This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues in Europe (Marton, F., Hounsell, D., and Entwistle, N. (eds.) (1997). The Experience of Learning, 2nd edn., Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh) to student learning. A feature of these inventories is that they measure the response of a group to a particular context, rather than more general characteristics of individuals in that group. Studies using these inventories have consistently shown relations between students' approaches to learning and the quality of their learning outcome. The question of interest to many university teachers is whether there are relations between the way teachers approach their teaching and ways their students approach their learning. This question was answered in a study published in 1999 that used the ATI to show that teacher-focused approaches to teaching were associated with students' reproducing orientations. Subsequent research revealed that in subjects where teachers adopted more studentfocused approaches to teaching, their students adopted a deeper approach to learning. Some recent research using the inventory is reviewed along with an analysis of the validity of the ATI. The current version of the inventory is reproduced in this paper.

Studies of student learning have shown that students' conceptions of learning are strongly correlated with their approaches to study. Students who consider learning in quantitative terms are likely to find it very difficult to adopt a deep approach to learning. This study looks at the parallel situation for teachers. It looks at the conceptions of teaching and learning of a group of first year science lecturers, and how those conceptions relate to their approaches to teaching. The results also parallel those found for students. Strong relations are found between conceptions of teaching and approaches to teaching. Relations between conceptions of teaching and conceptions of learning were not so strong, but lecturers with highly developed conceptions of teaching differentiated between teaching and learning in quite different ways to those with less well-developed conceptions. The implications of these results for the practice and development of teaching in higher education are discussed.

Abstract. Changing lecturers' teaching strategies to improve learning in higher education may mean first having to address the intentions associated with those strategies. The study reported in this paper used a phenomenographic approach to explore the intentions associated with the teaching strategies of first year physical science lecturers. Approaches found ranged from those involving information transmission to those where the intention was to develop learning through conceptual change, but in all approaches, logical relations were found between intention and strategy. The implications for attempts to improve teaching through developing strategies are discussed.

This paPer describes the results, and some implications, of an empirical study of the congruence between intention and strategy of university science teachers' approaches to teaching in their first year science courses. The study drew upon the results of a previous phenomenographic study which identified qualitatively different approaches to teaching. An approaches to teaching inventory was subsequently developed which included scales representing the intentions and strategies identified in the first study. This inventory was distributed to a sample of university teachers of first year science courses in Australia. The results confirmed the proposed relationship between intention and strategy, and showed that a Student-focused Strategy was associated with a Conceptual Change Intention, while a Teacher-focused Strategy was associated with an Information Transfer Intention. It is concluded that the traditional form of academic development focussing on teaching strategies (for example, activity based strategies) is unlikely to be successful without an ongoing focus on the intentions which are associated with the strategy.

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The paper concludes by arguing that if we are to improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education we will need to take account of the perceptions teachers have of their teaching context.

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